Labels

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Analysis: Presbyterian church shows Israel tough love

"Presbyterians can use this
opportunity to straighten the White House's spine based on what the
administration already knows: Israel is intentionally blocking progress
in the peace talks while jeopardizing US strategic interests in the
region, not to mention the fate of Palestinians and Israelis alike."

Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American business consultant in Ramallah and blogs at epalestine.com.

The two million-member Presbyterian Church (USA) is about to make history in the Middle East, yet again.

In
the coming days, local delegates from the Church will travel to Detroit
to attend the 221st Presbyterian General Assembly to consider a set of
eight overtures that ask church leaders to review support of two states
for Palestine and Israel in light of unfolding facts on the ground.

Other
issues to be considered are backing of equal rights and unblocked
economic development for all inhabitants of Israel, and divesting from
the likes of Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola Solutions. The
church is clearly stepping up to the plate and realigning its policies
with its values.

Political America and Corporate America should be taking note.

Reminiscent
of the struggle against Apartheid South Africa, the church is poised to
step in where successive US administrations have failed to hold Israel
accountable to international and humanitarian law, not to mention sheer
common sense.

The US has paid never-ending lip service to the
need to end Israel's 47-year military occupation of the West Bank,
including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. During the past two
decades, the US has coupled lip service with the monopolizing of a peace
process that has led the international community to a dead end; not to
mention leaving Muslim and Christian Palestinians on the ground, in the
occupied territory as well as in Israel, standing naked in front of a
state bent on militarily controlling another people and discriminating
against over 20 percent of their own non-Jewish population.

Presbyterians have had enough and are taking the lead to change the equation and stop the damage being perpetrated by Israel.

Political
America should not take lightly the new reality that mainstream
churches and civil society have reached a point where they can no longer
blindly repeat calls for a resolution based on "two states" when
Israeli actions on the ground, by way of continued illegal settlement
building and much more, have created a single state reality between the
Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River.

Secretary of State Kerry
alluded to exactly this at the outset of the last failed round of US-led
negotiations when he testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee
in April 2013 and noted, "I believe the window for a two-state solution
is shutting, I think we have some period of time -- a year to
year-and-a-half to two years, or it's over."

The Presbyterian
Church is crying out from the highest mountain it can that for a
two-state solution not to be "over" immediate action must be taken. They
are calling for the Church to review this core issue over the next two
years.

Corporate America should also be closely following the Presbyterian General Assembly's proceedings.

In
the 2012 Assembly, delegates addressed the issue of divesting from
firms that benefit from or contribute to Israel's military occupation by
attempting to pass a resolution calling for divestment from Israel.
When the so-called pro-Israel lobby got word of this, they mobilized to
introduce and pass a counter overture that promotes "positive
investment" instead of divestment.

In a perfected Orwellian
move, these lobbyists publicly promote investment in Palestine, while
simultaneously turning a blind eye to the systematic Israeli polices
strangling the Palestinian economy.

Investment in Palestine --
without divestment from the Israeli occupation -- only continues to
underwrite the status quo of military occupation. For investment to be
successful occupation must be dismantled and sovereign control of
Palestine's economic resources passed to the Palestinians.

In
this month's assembly, the divestment resolution will be brought to the
floor once again for a vote. Now it comes at the heels of Secretary
Kerry's failed blitz to resolve the conflict and a momentous trip by the
Pope to Bethlehem where he prayed at the illegal Separation Wall. The
US-based organization, Jewish Voice for Peace, recently noted that the
Israel lobby's efforts have included offering Presbyterian leaders
all-expense-paid trips to Israel.

Presbyterians can use this
opportunity to straighten the White House's spine based on what the
administration already knows: Israel is intentionally blocking progress
in the peace talks while jeopardizing US strategic interests in the
region, not to mention the fate of Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Palestinian
civil society and Palestinians -- Christians and Muslims -- have urged
everyone interested in seeing peace with justice to divest from the
occupation and to invest only where the occupation does not benefit. We
struggle to remain hopeful while a cement wall as high as 24 feet tall
snakes through our homeland.

After all, we do not seek a
beautified prison. We want the prison walls dividing Palestinians from
Palestinians to come tumbling down, and that will not happen unless
economic pressure is placed on Israel to end the occupation. Thus, the
upcoming Assembly's overture that calls for divestment from firms
benefiting from the occupation, while affirming "Occupation-free
Investment in Palestine," is spot on.

Palestinians did not
invent the non-violent tool of divestment. After unsuccessfully trying
to secure their rights using a multitude of other means, Palestinians
have focused their efforts on non-violent methods of resisting military
occupation that have been used throughout history by others: boycott,
divestment, sanction, international law, civil disobedience, diplomatic
efforts, economic resistance, and the like. Supporting these tools is
supporting non-violence; the alternative is to push Palestinians into
using violent means of resistance. If nonviolence is deemed unacceptable
then violence becomes that much more likely.

The upcoming
Presbyterian votes provides an important opportunity to say yes to
nonviolence as the means to overcoming Israeli occupation and
discrimination.